CRL update expected in October

Decoteau Park, the Winter Garden and the rest of the Ice District are all upgrades that were made possible when the city took out a Community Revitalization Levy in the sum of about $200 million. How much projected increased tax revenue from those upgrades will fill city coffers is expected sometime in the next four to six weeks.

Executive Director of the Downtown Arena Project Rick Daviss says the city is very pleased with the amount of development happening in the downtown core.

“It’s taken a lot of the risk out of the equation. When this arena project was approved there was a lot of speculation as to will development actually occur or is this just a dream that we hope will happen. With all the development that’s occurring now, not just Ice District, but outside of Ice District we’re quite confident now that we’ll meet our revenue projections handily.”

Mayor Don Iveson says that he knows we’ll be able to pay back the CRL for the arena and the winter garden and other components.

“That will be covered and that’s why we have been able to advance Decoteau Park and the sewer work and a number of other things because at this point we’re confident that with the development that we see today we will be whole.”

Iveson says projections are trending upwards, and that is good news for the city’s bottom line.

“Because as soon as the CRL is payed back all of that tax levy money that was appropriated for however many years to pay back the borrowing will become general revenue for the City of Edmonton, and that will be a really good time for somebody else to be the mayor of the City of Edmonton because that will be 30 million, 40, 50 million dollars of unrestricted funds at that time for city building priorities of the day.”